House it in a temporary box, then sell it as a nucleus or starter colony. They sell for at least $150 around here.
Find the queen, dispatch her, then merge the bees using newspaper to strengthen a weak colony.
Offer it to a friend or club member.
Keep it for a month or two and use it to make comb honey (swarms are very good at doing this fast), then combine it with another hive later in the season.
Like your situation, my city regulates how many hives I can keep at an urban site. The limit is 2. However, they understand that swarms happen, so I am allowed to have up to 5 hives for no longer than 2 months. The above concepts are therefore viable for me if I catch a swarm.
I split my colonies every year either when I find swarm cells or when a strong colony starts to back fill the brood nest during swarming season. I usually wait for the daughter of a split to prove she is ok then dispatch her mother and re unite the two colonies. This gives me lots of bees to collect nectar but only one laying queen so by the time autumn comes the colony goes into winter s normal size. Sometimes I make late nucs up to give me a spare queen or two next spring should I need her. If I donāt then I sell the colony on. Overwintered nucs are at a premium in the spring.
Iāve never managed to catch any of my own swarms though I think I can say hand on heart that I have only ever lost three. Artificial swarms are nowhere near as good st drawing comb.
Most swarms I have caught here have been casts
Awesome replies, thanks heaps, ok so what about before a swarm? Say I find drone comb or queen cells, I cant seem to find any info on that. Do I just let it happen or do what I have seen online and cut them out?
I am not Wally (who wrote the article), nor I am related. Just trying to do the right thing. Apologies to anyone who thinks I bang this drum too oftenā¦
Not too often
I did ask to make this a stickyā¦or whatever you call it here.
His method of artificially swarming the colonies (his modified snelgrove) is an absolute godsend for folk who have difficulty finding queen but you MUST have a decent distance between the box re-queening itself and the rest of your hives
I just posted the same question somewhere else and then found this thread which is been very helpfulā¦ I captured the Swarm from my hive. My objective is to have that one very strong hive. So my intention is to wait a few weeks while feeding this captured swarm. My objective is too merge all these workers back into the hive they swarmed from. So I guess the only question I really have is how to handle the queenā¦ I know the queen this swarmed is a very good Queen and sheās only one year oldā¦ at this point my intention is 2 eliminate the new Queen and reinstall the one that swarmed but my concern is weather at this point the Swarm instinct will be gone or not? It seems very risky to eliminate her and put the workers back in the hive not knowing if the newly emerged Queen Will Survive or mateā¦
Donāt do anything with the new queen until she is laying.
No matter how old your original queen is there is no getting away from the fact that swarm queens are often superseded so I would wait to see what a few weeks brings.
If both are good you could overwinter one in a nuc.
